


Prompt Drabble Collection

by SlippinMickeys



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Drabble, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Jealousy, MSR, Mulder/Other (but not really), PWP, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-01-29 12:40:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 10,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21410338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlippinMickeys/pseuds/SlippinMickeys
Summary: Each ‘chapter’ is a different Tumblr Prompt.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 89
Kudos: 305





	1. “I’m not here to make friends”

Fowley had her hands on her hips, her lipstick spread a little too wide on her face.

“I’m not here to make friends Agent Scully, I’m here to help Fox.”

The use of his first name was getting on her nerves and her implication that Scully was just lint to be brushed off Mulder’s shoulder was getting under her skin. She worked here too, god damn it.

She took a steadying breath through her nose, trying to maintain her poise.

“The X-Files isn’t ruled by hegemony,” Scully said, “it’s a partnership.”

“Then why don’t you have a desk?”

It was a purposeful cut, the gloves coming off, and Scully both relished it and was annoyed at its callow nature. If that was how it was going to be,  _ fine _ . 

She stood up straighter and walked casually around the side of Mulder’s desk and sat down in the chair. While maintaining eye contact with Fowley, she opened the top drawer and pulled out a hot pink nail file and set it to the edge of her finger.

Fowley eyed what she was doing. Marking her territory. It all but crowed  _ I keep tampons in here, too. _

“I’m going to ask you to leave my office, Agent Fowley.”

The woman scowled, but turned without a word and sauntered out the door.

Scully then did something she wasn’t proud of. Something she hadn't done since she was a teenager. 

She flipped Diana off as soon as her back was turned. 


	2. At Dusk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from kega-umi: “ Mulder is almost get caught while in exile by police, and Scully have an emotional breakdown because she thought she will lose him again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is unbeta-ed. Apologies for any typos/errors.

1\. He’d been on the phone with her when it happened. The sharp bleat of a police siren, the slam of a car door, some tense chatter in the background, then, “Scully, I gotta-“ Click. Nothing. 

She’d shouted his name into the phone, then grabbed the baby and the diaper bag and drove way too fast to her Mom’s. 

2\. She didn’t tell her mother why she was there and Margaret didn’t ask.

Once William was in the pack-n-play under her mother’s watchful eye, Scully ducked into the small half bath and allowed herself to feel for exactly five minutes. Half-hyperventilating sobs, a keen so high only dogs could hear it. Snot running down her face, hands shaking, half-moon dents in her thighs where her nails dug and dug and dug until finally one broke.

The second-hand of her watch hit the 3 and she took one bracing breath and tore off six squares of cheap, one-ply toilet paper. Two swipes under her nose, a delicate brush under her eyelids, and into the trash it went. 

The wallpaper in the bathroom had long, vertical stripes in maroon and she flashed on a prison cell. She left the bathroom in a rush and punched the light switch with far too much force. 

3\. Three days later, she pushed into her apartment with arms loaded down; a bag of groceries in one hand, diaper bag slung over her shoulder, keys practically falling out of her hand, infant car seat slung through an elbow—the heavier Nuna, because the Gracco didn’t seem as sturdy.   
  
It was coming on dusk outside and her apartment was dark, honeyed light leaking in behind her through the open doorway. Then, a sound; a rustle of clothing, a whisper of skin on ticking stripe fabric.

He rose from the couch like a resurrection, crespucular as a lightning bug, and she froze, the keys clattering to the floor. 

“Scully?”


	3. Her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from sunflowerseedsandscience: “ Mulder is unhappily married when Scully is partnered with him, and while he doesn't cheat (because sorry that's not romantic), he falls for her so hard that he finally gets the courage to end the marriage and start fresh.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is unbeta-ed. My apologies for any typos/errors

1\. He’d never had her picture up on his desk, didn’t even have one in his wallet. If anyone thought it odd—even his new partner—no one ever said anything.  
  
After their third case, Scully finally asked him her name.  
  
“Lauren,” he said, and left it at that.

  
  
2\. It amused him how short Scully was, how she’d have to tip her head almost all the way back to look at him when he stepped up into her space. Sometimes he did it just so she’d have to. But she is never flustered by it, never alarmed. Sometimes he thinks she is maybe amused by it, too.

  
  
3\. His wedding ring is nicked, scuffed, scratched. Dull and lifeless. He used to take it off when he went to the gym, trying to save the shine from the textured-grip bars of the free weights, but now he doesn’t bother.  
Some days he daydreams of flushing it down a toilet at the Hoover, flinging it into the Potomac, but he’d get an earful about it at home even if he claimed it was an accident and he doesn’t want to catch the grief.

  
  
4\. It was a hot day, stifling, the kind of brutal DC weather they usually got in July, but it was only early May. Nevertheless, they’d both agreed they needed to get out of the office for lunch. There was a cafe just past Ford’s Theater they both liked and it was her turn to pay.  
  
He was holding down a rare open table, lost in thought, when Scully handed him a styrofoam cup of iced tea with the good, pebbled ice, a lemon wedge she’d already squeezed in. He thought of her fingers touching the skin of the lemon and the lemon touching his tongue.  
  
“Are you okay, Mulder?” she asked. He vaguely wondered when was the last time Lauren had asked him how he was. He couldn’t think of it.  
  
“Never better,” he said, and shot her a grin.  
  
The sun was coming through the window just so, and it slanted on her hair; it shone like a new penny. She reached out and squeezed his shoulder.  
  
“I’ll be right back with the food,” she said.  
  
He could still feel her grip as she walked away.

  
  
5\. Lauren was a brunette, leggy, an only child who acted like it. She had pouty lips and full even breasts with nipples the color of sun-drenched brick. She was an executive at a PR firm, had clients that were dick-pic sending senators, cheating congressmen. She was trying out vegetarianism, and liked her martinis dry.  
  
She had gone to Mexico with a bunch of girlfriends for her 30th birthday and she’d called him at 1:00am Pacific time on the night of and slurred “you don’t even know what you have.” When she got home, she told him she wanted to have a baby.

  
  
6\. He would have never been into Scully in high school, probably not even college. She was short, smart and a little prickly because of it--she had a beauty mark she tried to hide and soft daylily hair.  
  
She had only started to figure out how best to dress her body in the last year or so, and Mulder found her comportment utterly captivating. Gone were the overlarge blazers from their first year or two together, with the big buttons and the monster shoulder pads. Scully suddenly had a waist, a bust, shapely legs emerging from sharply cut pencil skirts, trim ankles that dipped into three inch pumps.  
  
“Is your partner still shopping at TJ Maxx?” Lauren would ask, about every 4 months.  
  
Mulder would always answer “yeah."

  
  
7\. He started taking more cases out of state, and Scully never once complained. She would simply meet him at the airport with a smile, sometimes a coffee, and a light “you ready to go?”  
  
There were times he caught her staring at him, a thoughtful look on her face. She had learned long ago not to ask about Laura, though sometimes she asked him how he was doing, and he knew it was the same question.  
  
Finally, on an airplane over Utah, he blurts, “Lauren wants a baby.”  
  
Scully, next to him in the window seat, nods once and then reaches out to slowly lower the sun shade, then turns to him.  
  
“Do you want a baby, Mulder?” she asks, and he doesn’t answer right away. He’s thought about it a lot.  
  
“I thought maybe I didn’t,” he says, “but…” with that one word, he notices the way her breathing changes, hitches a little. On her lap, the fingers on her right hand flex. He makes a decision, steels himself. “But… lately when I think of having a baby, it only ever looks like you.”

  
8\. He doesn’t see her for over a week after his mid-air confession, and her absence has his gut roiling. When she comes back, she has freckles sprinkled across her nose and she acts carefully normal.  
  
He acts carefully normal, too.

  
9\. Two months after that, he stands up from the desk and shrugs on his suit coat. It’s just after 1pm.  
  
“I gotta get to court,” he says, and Scully half-rises from where she sits, a look of surprise on her face.  
  
“We have to testify?" she asks.  
  
“No,” he says, holding up a hand to stop her, “just me.” She retakes her seat.  
  
“Which case?” she looks puzzled, usually she’s the one who talks with whichever DA, schedules the legal stuff.  
  
He pauses in the doorway, flattening out his collar.  
  
“Mulder vs. Mulder” he says, and leaves before he can see her face.  
  
  
10\. He races into the hospital, pell mell, not knowing where to go, his thoughts running too fast to articulate what he’s looking for when he grasps at a passing nurse. Finally he gets it out and she points him in the direction of the elevator, says “ninth floor.”  
  
He almost trips over his own feet as he enters her room, the door bouncing off the rubber doorstop.  
  
“Scully,” he says out of breath.  
  
From the bed, her face is wan, but her eyes brighten a bit when she sees him. Her hair has grown out since her short bob days and hangs limply over her shoulders, lightly snarled in places.  
  
“Mulder,” she says, and he walks lightly to the bed, sinks down next to it on his knees.  
  
On her chest rests a small bundle, wrapped in a blue and pink striped blanket.  
  
“You have a son,” she says on a tired smile, and turns the baby so he can see its face.  
  
“He looks like his sister,” he says. He still can’t catch his breath.  
  
  
  



	4. “You should tell them we’re married”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From the kega-umi Tumblr prompt: “ Other doctors trying to ask Scully for a date, pre IWTB”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The is unbeta-ed because I’m a thirsty bitch. Please excuse any typos/errors.

She has gotten good at saying “thanks, but no thanks.” 

She has tried out different phrases, testing each one to see how it feels on her tongue. Each rejection she doles out has a different flavor, and she can’t quite pick out her favorite. 

“I’m not in the market,” she says to the dermatologist, like he’s trying to sell her a new car. 

“No, thank you,” to the gynecologist — quick and direct because she’s never been able to figure out their career motivations, and she’s always a bit weirded out. 

“I’m flattered, but seeing someone,” to the pediatric surgeon. She’s seen the way he is with his patients and wants to let him down easy. He’s a good guy. 

Ophthalmologists, Orthopedists, Oncologists (she’s had quite enough of those, thank you), every specialist in the O’s and on down through the alphabet, they’ve all had a go. 

Her favorite is when Mulder is nearby, when suddenly she feels his presence--all lumbering six feet of him. He looks like Grizzly Adams and walks like he still carries a gun. There had been rumors around the hospital about his existence for years, but he’s only recently felt comfortable showing his face in public again, and even then only in short bursts. They scurry away quickly after one sharp hazel look.

“You should tell them we’re married,” he says, as he walks her to his car in the Outer Pleiades of the hospital parking lot. Her car is in the shop again.

“You should have parked in my spot,” she says, feeling the shoes she’s been in all day rubbing her heel raw. 

“I don’t like the surveillance,” he reminds her, and nods towards the camera pointed right at her empty parking space near the hospital entrance. “You should tell them we’re married,” he says again. 

“Mulder,” she says, her voice a little bit warning, a little bit guilty. 

He’d gotten her tipsy and talked her into a hand fasting ceremony in the rainy mountains of North Carolina when they were still on the run. He’d been goofy and happy and they’d felt safe. She still remembers it fondly; him passing her a flask of whiskey and impressing upon her the traditions of her Celtic forebears. 

She'd weakly argued in the days and years since that it wasn’t a legally binding ceremony, that they weren’t really married, but Mulder always reminded her that it was sometimes accepted in the eyes of her church, and anyway, they were common-law by now in at least half the states in the union. 

She finally flops into the passenger seat of his Explorer, immediately kicking off her shoes and reclining onto the headrest. She hears his door close, but the engine doesn’t turn over, so she finally rolls her head to look at him. His eyes are bright, his beard a bit bushy, but she can still see the bones of the man she fell in love with. 

“You should tell them we’re married,” he says again, giving her a significant look and then purposefully lowering his gaze so that she follows his line of sight. There on the console, in one of the cup holders is a small dark jewelry box. 

She looks at it a long moment. 

“Go ahead,” he says, when her eyes flicker back up to meet his. 

She reaches down and gently lifts it from where it rests, feeling the soft suede of the box on the tips of her fingers. 

When she finally lifts the tiny lid, a brilliant, single solitaire shines up at her as if it’s lit from within. The band is silver or platinum—she can’t tell which.

“Mulder,” she says, her voice full of wonder. He finally smiles at her. 

The words _Tiffany & Co_. are pressed neatly in silver script on the silk lining of the top of the lid. 

“I always thought they came in little blue boxes,” she says, still not pulling the ring out from where it sat. She can't take her eyes off of it. 

“Common misconception,” he says, “or so I’m told by my dedicated saleswoman, Svetlana. Apparently the black best sets off the brilliance of the diamond.” He shrugs at her, pleased that she seems pleased. “It came in a little blue bag, though. I have that if you want it.”

She doesn’t say anything, just stares at the ring, half wishing her mother were here to see it. 

Finally, Mulder turns the key in the ignition and reaches out to squeeze her knee before he puts the car in gear. 

“You should tell them we’re married,” he says, one last time. Then, “maybe now they’ll stop asking."


	5. Metempsychosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From the monikafilefan prompt:

_ Not everything is about you, Mulder. _

Maybe not, he thought as they sat in silence, but this one sure as hell felt like it. 

He looked at her as she looked at her lap, the thoughtful quietude of the room stretching until it felt like there was an ocean between them. She hadn’t said a word about her diagnosis since she’d told him about it, and now was definitely not the time to bring it up. 

In the stillness of the office he could practically hear the buzzing of the tattoo gun, imagined the tigers, anchors, skulls on the wall.

She’d inked the small of her back, the place he usually rested his hand when they walked. The psychologist in him wondered if she’d done it on purpose. 

Ergot on her skin, St. Anthony’s Fire in her blood. 

Cancer in her brain.

He wondered if she knew what the ouroboros stood for: life, death, rebirth. Alchemy. Was she thinking of the Gnostics when she chose it? Was she thinking of Leonard Betts? Metempsychosis, the ancient Greeks called it — the transmigration of souls. Reincarnation.

When her soul left her body, would it wait for his? If it didn’t, he would go and find it. 


	6. Him

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From a prompt from linlo-eggshellheart: “ I’m obsessed with your Drabbles and Ch 3 of the Tumblr prompts (where Mulder is married when Scully joins the X-Files) has me feeling some kind of way. I’d love to read the same thing from Scully’s perspective. Also, I’d love to know more about how they get from 9 to 10 (since clearly a lot happened 🤣). Thank you for being amazing!! 🥰”

1\. He wore a ring, but never mentioned a wife. Nor should he, she supposed; they’d only just been assigned to each other, they’d only just met. 

She considered that perhaps he was a widower, but didn’t feel comfortable asking. She thought maybe he was just a closed off, private man, until she found herself on his hotel bed in her robe, and he was telling her all about his family, his missing sister. 

Then they had been three cases in, and there was still that ring. She finally asked him his wife’s name. 

“Laura,” he said.

She’d heard enough men talk about their wife in that tone of voice to know the relationship was not one like her parents, was not one she’d want herself. 

She felt something close to pity.

2\. He saved her life in the Twin Cities. 

Donnie Pfaster was something more than evil, and when he told her he’d prepared himself for what he was going to see, she’d wished he’d prepared her, too. She was so thrown by the case that in addition to seeking out Karen Kosseff and availing herself of the therapist services supplied by the Bureau, she had plowed right past the fact that her partner had taken on the case for the sole purpose of taking her to the Redskins/Vikings football game. 

A date. 

3\. She’d been with married men. She’d seen what havoc could be wreaked from the pursuit of such a relationship, and she had decided long ago that she would never do it again. 

Mulder had become her best friend. Lately, her only friend. Their reassignment had been difficult, but she talked to him more days a week than she didn’t. She tried not to notice that she was number one on his emergency contact list, and Laura was number two. 

She loved him as a friend, loved him as perhaps something more, but wasn’t convinced of his feelings for her until she was sitting atop Skyland Mountain with her hands tied in front of her, bound and gagged, and amongst a confusion of lights and sound, Mulder stumbled onto the scene, appearing as if from a TARDIS, and threw a haymaker so vicious it knocked Duane Barry out cold. He kicked him in the gut for good measure, and then tenderly removed her bindings, scooped her up in his arms and carried her down the mountain despite her shaky protestations that she could walk. 

4\. She had met Laura only once, near the beginning of their partnership. 

Laura had dropped by their office to take Mulder to lunch on his birthday and had arrived 30 minutes early. As Mulder had told Scully he’d planned to meet his wife in the lobby, she concluded that Laura had shown up early on purpose, most likely with the sole intention of meeting Scully in the flesh. 

She’d given Scully an assessing once-over and then smiled at her with barely concealed conceit and distaste. She then turned on her clippy Manolo’s, and purred Mulder’s first name. 

He had the look of a man headed to the gallows. 

5\. Scully had tried dating. For a while she accepted every offer, let her mother set her up on blind dates, went through the produce section of her local market with a wandering eye. 

In the end, she had a few second dates, two one night stands, and a heart that was closed to all but one. 

Each night she would soak in the bath until she pruned, cry until the water turned cold and lament her role as Eponine. In the morning, she would meet her partner at the airport, hand him a coffee and a cheerful smile and board the damn plane. 

6\. “You’re in love with your partner.” Missy said it as a statement rather than a question. 

They were trying an organic tapas restaurant her sister had found and Scully’s appetite disappeared before Melissa had finished the sentence.

“Missy!” she said with horror and embarrassment, which Melissa brushed aside with a flick of her wrist.

When Scully was 12 and 13, she kept a diary. No matter how well she hid it, Missy would always find it, pick the lock, and read it back to her whenever she walked in her room. 

Now that they were older, it didn’t matter if Scully’s secrets were at the center of a maze; Missy was forever Theseus, gaining its center and slaying the minotaur. Scully could keep nothing from her--she didn’t even know why she tried.

“I can hardly blame you,” Missy plowed on, popping an olive into her mouth, “he’s a dish.”

Scully slumped in her seat.

“So’s his wife,” she said.

Missy narrowed her eyes at her sister.

“Is she mean?” Missy asked. 

Scully wouldn’t answer. 

“I knew it,” Missy said, then, “how mean? Like on a scale of Heathers?”

Scully touched a napkin delicately to her lip. “Shannon Doherty” she said, with all the dignity she could muster. 

Missy leaned back in her chair. “You and I are going shopping,” she said. 

7\. On an airplane over the arid West, Mulder told her, in no uncertain terms, that he was in love with her.

When their plane landed, she called Skinner and requested a week of PTO and an immediate transfer. She would not be a homewrecker again. She would _not_. 

After three days next to a pool in Key Largo, Skinner called with an offer: Salt Lake City, take it or leave it. 

Three days later, drained of tears and out of sunscreen, she called him back: leave it. 

She returned to work on Monday. She pretended she never heard. 

8\. Two months later, Mulder stood in the doorway of their office and told her he was on his way to divorce court. 

Scully sat at her desk, dazed, thrilled, scared out of her mind. A laugh bubbled up from inside her and burst into the dusty air at the bottom of the Hoover building.   
  
  


9\. Six weeks after the paperwork went through, Mulder showed up at her door at 9:00pm on a Friday and kissed her soundly on the mouth.

Five minutes later they were completely undressed, each het up to the point of frenzy. When she sunk down on him, took him all the way inside of her, she felt something pass between them, something heady and true. From that moment on she would always be a little less of a skeptic.

Later, when he was tracing lazy patterns over her skin with his fingers, their heads just touching on the pillow, he asked thoughtfully, “Is this what forever feels like?”

She took a moment to just look at him. Then, “Yes,” she said, matter-of-factly. 

“I never knew,” he said, his voice full of wonder. 

10\. Two years later, in a bed in Bellefleur, Oregon, in the place where it all started, he looked up from in between her legs and licked his lips thoughtfully. 

“You taste different,” he said. 

She did some quick math in her head, then reached down and ran her fingers lightly through his hair. 

“I think we should go back to DC,” she said with a tremulous smile.


	7. Playing Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From the sarie-fairy prompt: “ Some amazing person on Twitter described the feeling she got during the M&S scene at the end of Existence. I’d love you to use it in a fic 🤩 Prompt: “I’m feeling things in the southern part of my abdomen.””

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was quick and dirty — it is unbeta-ed.

She had opened the connecting door to Mulder’s room just as he emerged from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist, slung low. He was bare-chested, using another towel to dry his hair. She paused, and he caught her staring.

She was still wearing the burgundy blazer and skirt set she’d been in all day, but had stepped out of her shoes and pantyhose.

He gave her a slow smile. 

“Dr. Scully,” he said on a nod. 

She decided to play along.

“Agent Mulder,” she said, nodding back. 

“Are you feeling alright?” he asked, as he moved into the room, running the towel one more time through his hair before he tossed it casually on the bed. He turned to her. “You look a bit flushed.”

“Do I?” she said, and he took a step toward her. He nodded. 

She felt flushed. Rubicund and aroused. Game to see where he took this. 

“I feel…” she wondered what she was about to say. 

He took another step toward her, the skin of his chest bronzed in the amber light of the hotel lamp. 

“What do you feel, Doctor Scully?” he asked, his tongue darting out to wet his full lower lip.

She followed his tongue with her eyes.

“You want a clinical assessment?” she asked, her voice sounded breathless and lusty, even to her own ears.

He nodded slowly.

“I’m feeling things in the southern part of my abdomen.”

He took another step towards her, shuffled his feet closer, his toes gently bumping into hers. She got a quick whiff of his aftershave mixed with the sweet smell of soap. She could feel her panties dampen.

“Describe these feelings,” he said, his voice low, barely above a whisper.

“It’s an ache,” she answered, a delicious fucking ache.

He blinked once, slowly, reached out one finger, ran it from her elbow to her wrist, his touch barely a graze. The hairs on her arm stood on end under the fabric of her jacket. 

“An ache,” he whispered, and she nodded, the ache accumulating need. “How southern are we talking?”

Her mouth began to water. She undid the single button on her blazer, which fell gently open. 

His throat bobbed. 

“South is my favorite direction,” he went on. He moved his finger to press gently into the white blouse over the skin of her belly, and dragged it agonizingly slowly down. She could feel her nipples pucker under the scratchy lace of her bra.

He started in lean down to her incrementally, and stopped when his lips where mere inches from hers. She felt one puff of breath. 

“Deep,” she said, “deep south-“ before she finished the word, his lips were crushing hers, his arms were around her, grabbing both globes of her ass in vice-like fistfuls, pressing her throbbing sex into an absolutely monstrous erection lifting the front of the towel he still barely wore. 

She whimpered, thrusting her hips into him. 

He pulled his lips back in a hiss.

She felt the blossom of power unfurl in her chest as control shifted from him to her. She moved her lips to his ear. 

“Do you have a treatment recommendation?” she whispered, before latching her teeth onto the flesh of his earlobe. He groaned into her collar, then she felt his own teeth gently crimp into the skin of her neck. 

“Just one,” he said, then licked the skin where his teeth had been. 

The towel then slid from his hips as if he’d planned it. She looked down at his erection proudly bobbing between them, then met his eyes; they were hooded, brimming with lust. Without looking away, she reached behind her to unzip her skirt, then shifted her hips, letting it fall to the floor to pool around her ankles. She shrugged her shoulders once and the blazer dropped down beside it. Mulder’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t look away. 

Maintaining eye contact, she put her hand to his shoulder and pushed him gently backward and he took slow steps until the back of his knees hit the bed. He sank down slowly on it, and she crawled onto his lap without ever looking away. 

He gave her a small nod and she returned it, then reached down to pull her panties aside as she sunk down onto him. Both their eyes finally fluttered shut. She tipped her head forward until it rested on his shoulder and then started rocking slowly into him, feeling stretched, filled, replete. 

“Scu-“ he barely managed to whisper, and then he reached out and rested his hands onto her hips, squeezing her gently with each thrust. She reached a hand out to run through his hair and he looked up her as she looked down, astounded by what she saw there. 

His hips started rising to meet her, so she reached her hand under his arm and then up and around his shoulder, twisting as she grasped until he had her flipped, her hair fanned out around her face, Mulder’s ever-quickening thrusts pinning her to the mattress. 

“More,” she said, and he obliged, the wet slap of their bodies the only other sound in the room. 

With a growl, he reached down and jerked at the scrap of her panties, tearing the fabric and yanking them off. With the sound, there came on a rawness to their coupling, something base and feral. She raked her nails down his back and began to feel the bright throb in her womb, the onset of her undoing. 

With a tameless shout, she came undone, lights flashing behind her eyes. Mulder followed with a hoarse call of his own, pumping into her one last time before he slumped half onto the bed next to her. 

A dull ringing in her ears, she just heard his muffled question.

“Are you okay?” he asked, still trying to find breath. 

She turned her head, pressed a kiss to his damp shoulder. 

“Just what the doctor ordered,” she said. 


	8. Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This from the prompt from admiralty:”I got this on the prompt generator and immediately thought you could do it justice: "Scully and Mulder pressing their faces together sleepily, not even kissing, just resting their foreheads together, noses brushing, breathing each other in." FUCK ME UP PLS”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I started this and then it went two different directions. It has two different endings. A-choose-your-own-adventure. Read the first three paragraphs, and then read “1” — when you reach “{coda}”, start the first three paragraphs again and then skip to ending “2.” Is that complicated? Who knows. Do what you want, and (hopefully) enjoy. 😅

It is either very late or very early; the quality of the light outside has a verging quiescence, like it’s on the edge of something. 

He stirs beside her, his eyes flitting open, his head next to hers on the pillow, their foreheads pressed gently together. She can only focus on one of his eyes from this close, so she chooses one and he does the same. She studies it as she would a piece of evidence, taking time and care, looking for the story it has to tell her. 

She sees only love reflected back at her, an infinity mirror echoing their devotion.

##

1

Her muscles feel stretched out and pleasantly sore. She can still feel the trail of his dried saliva down her skin.

His lower lip is plumped out and irresistibly kissable, but she holds off for now, reveling in the feeling of the soft, warm bed. Of having hours more together, just like this if they want it. 

He reaches out, trials the lightest of touches down her cheek, soft as a butterfly kiss, light as a dandelion seed skimming the air. She breaks out in gooseflesh.

Mulder has the inexorable pull of a black hole; should she even want to, she will never escape his orbit. 

He is long, warm bones in the bed, minky hair and lean muscle. He is all she ever wanted--a cunning linguist with vulpecular charm.

She breathes him in. He breathes her out. {coda}

##

2

They had come for him again, trying to extinguish a light that was not theirs to put out. Mulder has the soul of an albatross; long of wing and pure of heart. They would have to get through her if they wanted to hook him. 

She let his breath fan her face, breathing him in, letting him breathe her in in kind. Dawn would come soon enough and they would have to face the day and whatever it held for them. For now, they had this; a warm bed and haptic tenderness, their enemies abed, stopped in their tracks and turned away.

She will not imagine a life without him in it. One mental flash of a burst of feathers upon the lawn, blood seeping into the grass is all she will allow. He is hers for the keeping, and she will not let them have him. He is her talisman and she, his protector.

She is the daughter of a sailor, and knows one thing to be true: it is very unlucky to kill an albatross. 


	9. Heated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Heated kiss" from Tumblr kiss drabble collection

It had started off innocently enough. 

It was the first time either one of them had gone out of town since they started sleeping together. Mulder’s place was closer to the airport, so Scully had carpooled home with him so she didn’t have to pay for parking. She planned to walk to the Metro stop a couple blocks away. He walked her to the door, her small suitcase rolling behind her on little wheels that looked like they came off a pair of rollerblades. 

“Bye, Mulder,” she said, one hand on the door handle. 

“Bye,” he said, then leaned down to give her a quick kiss. 

She smiled up at him. And he couldn’t resist leaning back down to steal one more. 

“Safe travels,” he said, as he pulled back. 

She was halfway through the doorway when he grabbed the sleeve of her coat. 

“Mul-” she started, but was cut off by his lips once again on hers. She smiled into it and pushed at his chest. 

He was having none of it. He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her flush against him. He leaned back only inches to look at her. 

“I have to go,” she said, laughing. 

“I haven’t finished saying goodbye,” he mumbled, and then closed the door and pushed her up against the back of it, not ungently.

The shove startled her, but lit something behind her eyes, which darkened a degree. Her breathing changed. 

This time when he leaned back down for a kiss, she pushed her lips back into him, scraped her fingers through the hair on the back of his head, pulling his head down. She nipped at him and slid her tongue past his lips. 

It was all the encouragement he needed. 

He grabbed her head in one hand and stroked his other hand up under her shirt and over the flat plane of her stomach. He tilted her head back and probed her mouth with his tongue, hot and demanding. Soon it was all teeth, panting breaths, a dump of dopamine to the system. 

Finally he pulled back, breathing hard, and looked down to see her clutching his shirt into a tight, wrinkled knot, her hair mussed, her lips swollen and glistening. 

“There,” he said, as she released his shirt and then smoothed a hand down it, “now I’ve said goodbye.”

She arched a brow at him, shook her hair out, and ducked under his arm, sliding out his door and down his hallway with quick, crisp footfalls. He held onto both sides of the doorway and leaned out to watch her go. 

Just as the elevator doors were closing on her, she connected eyes with him and gave him a salacious grin. 


	10. Funny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Funny kiss" from the Tumblr kiss drabble prompts

The motel’s proprietor insisted on escorting them to the one remaining room. The man was wearing filthy jeans and a faded red flannel button-up which was straining to encase an impressive beer belly. His hat said “Cabela’s” and he was missing a tooth. He unlocked the door with an unnecessary flourish. 

The room was as dingy as any other low rent just-above-_by-the-hour_accommodations they’d found themselves in over the years and Mulder tried to smile like he was impressed, but didn’t quite pull it off. 

Undeterred, the man leaned back just inside the doorway with his thumbs hooked through the belt loops on his jeans (which Scully was impressed he could even find) as though surveying his domain. 

“Yes sir,” the man said proudly, “guaranteed hot water,” and then, with unwarranted gravitas, “ and H. B. Oh.”

An uncomfortable silence unfurled.

“Wow,” Scully finally said, and Mulder shot her a look. The man made no indication he planned to leave. 

She mouthed _TIP_ at him and his expression became pained. 

Finally, he dug out his wallet and thumbed out a single dollar. 

He reached forward to shake the man’s hand and palm him the cash, when the man feigned to the left and then grabbed a startled Mulder by the shoulders and planted a wet, sloppy kiss on him one cheek at a time. 

“You have a pleasant stay, now,” he said, releasing Mulder, who was frozen in shock, and closing the door gently behind him. 

Scully could hear him whistling as he walked away. 

After a polite fifteen seconds, Scully released a loud, delicious peel of laughter, and Mulder finally shook himself of his brief catatonia and said, 

“What the _fuck_ just happened?”

He still had the dollar bill in his hand. 


	11. OT8W Drabble Prompt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drabble prompt: the kids find some old pics from the early years working in the files and Mulder goes on a rant about how stunning Scully was back then (and stil is).
> 
> I assumed the anon wanted me to set it in the world from Of The Eight Winds (the kids), so that's what I did. I'm in the middle of writing the sequel, so consider this a tiny glimpse into the world.

Mulder was in the attic with Lily and William, going through boxes, taking the few things that they had in storage that they thought they might need. 

Will had unearthed a box of old pictures and held one up for Mulder’s perusal.

“What’s this one from?” his son asked. 

Mulder came over to take a look. It was a glossy 8x10 of him and Scully facing each other, framed in profile, hovering on the edge of a crime scene. He remembered it, now. It had been taken by a federal crime scene tech who’d finished documenting a scene and had needed to finish off the roll of film. Mulder had seen him snapping and had handed the guy a fiver. Two weeks later it arrived in an interoffice envelope, accompanied by three dollars and a post-it that said “keep the change.”

In the photo, Scully was looking up at him, the sun at her back, slanting on her autumn hair so that it shone like a halo of spun gold. She was wearing a dark suit, as was her wont, the bulge of her service weapon at her back, one arm out and gesturing at something out of frame. He was struck, as he always seemed to be, by her exquisite beauty; her face was a composition. A work of art. A call to prayer. 

“God,” he said, a little awestruck, “look how young we were.”

“Mom used to be really pretty,” Will said, and though he said it kindly, Mulder turned to him slowly.

“I’m sorry, ‘ _ Used to be _ ?’” he said. 

Will looked nervously between his father and Lily. 

“She’s still pretty?” Will said, more as a question than a statement. 

“God damn right,” he said, “Every day I thank my lucky stars that she still deigns to share my bed.”

“Dad, don’t be gross,” from Lily, who at 17 didn’t mind her parent’s displays of affection so long as they weren’t public

“Gross?” Mulder said, pointing at each of them. “Gross? You were born of the loins of an ethereal creature of heaven, the both of you. Don’t blaspheme.”

“Says the guy who just said ‘God damn,’” said Lily, cheekily.

Mulder grinned and turned back to the photo.

“ _ To me, fair friend, you never can be old, for as you were when first your eye I ey’d, such seems your beauty still _ ,” Mulder said, looking at it. 

“Which sonnet?” Lily asked. 

“104,” he said, and they shared a smile. 

Another silent moment of admiring the photo and he set it down, turned to his children. 

“All right,” he said, “pack what you need. Let’s get a move on.”

He added the picture to his own cache. Twelve hours until they left. 

  
  



	12. Quarantine Drabble Prompt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From agirlcallednarelle: Drabble prompt - day 18 of self isolation, getting under each other's feet! Or their first meal out after self isolation is lifted?

“I want something I can’t make.”

It was Day 18 of self-isolation and if you looked at quarantine like the stages of grief, they had rolled easily past panic and guilt, skipped loneliness altogether and were deep in the grip of isolation.

Scully shot him a look.

“You can’t make anything,” she said, propping her feet up on the coffee table.

“I can make toast,” he said in rebuttal, “I can heat soup. I know every setting on that microwave.” Though he’d answered her, he hadn’t really taken her bait--his heart wasn’t in it. He sighed. “I want something I can’t make,” he repeated.

She hadn’t really realized how much they ate out until they couldn’t eat out anymore.

“I know what you mean.”

“I never thought I’d say this, but I’m getting sick of carbs,” he said.

Scully actually turned and gave him a look.

“I _know_,” he said.

They sat in silence for a few more minutes, the daily _what do you want to do for dinner?_ question zapping whatever morale they had left. They had spent the day tripping over each other, the walls of their unremarkable house seeming to siphon each of them into the other’s way at random intervals for its own amusement.

“Where should we go first when this whole thing is over?” she finally asked him, rolling her head on the back of the couch to look at him.

“Breakfast place,” he said right away, “somewhere with crispy hashbrowns and redeye gravy. And a waitress who offers to refill my coffee twelve more times than is necessary. It could even be a mean one and I won’t care.”

Scully could relate to the inclination.

“Then a salad place for lunch,” she said, and Mulder nodded his head, agreeing, “and a fancy dinner that night.”

Mulder closed his eyes, blissfully picturing it.

“Fancy folded napkins,” he said, “with a guy that comes by to crumb the table.”

“I’m going to get a steak,” Scully said, closing her own eyes, “_sous vide_, some kind of preparation we could never do here…”

She knew Mulder was nodding without having to open her eyes.

“Souffle for dessert,” he said, “with a glass of port because I can.”

She reached her hand over and took his.

“Soon enough,” she said.

He opened his eyes and looked at her.

“Soon enough,” he said, then squeezed her hand and stood. “In the meantime, I’ll make dinner.”

“Soup and toast?” Scully said, smiling at him.

“Gonna play to my strengths,” he said, returning her smile as he drifted off toward the kitchen.


	13. Journalist AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From a Tumblr anonymous prompt: “ Prompt for AU where Mulder is an investigative reporter and Scully is a Pathologist. They bicker and work together to get to the bottom of mysterious deaths and fall in love along the way. Scully is engaged to Ethan, Mulder's competition, but she is not happy or aware that he is cheating on her. Bonus points for angst, fluff, and smut.“
> 
> This is just a scene—a glimpse. I hope to one day write a full fic that will (again, hopefully) do this amazing prompt justice.

“You can’t tell anyone I gave this to you,” she said, and he had a sudden almost-psychic sexual flash of his cock splitting the soft autumn fur at her center. Of her head thrown back, her sharp little incisors gnashing at the air. 

He shook his head to clear it of the indecorus fantasy. 

“ _ The Post _ protects its sources, Dr. Scully,” he said, and took the envelope from her, his fingers brushing the skin of her hand as he did so. He was certain he saw the soft hairs of her wrist turn to goose flesh.

She turned her head away, offering him her profile, a soft rise of color high on her cheekbone. 

“Ethan Minette is my fiancé, Mr. Mulder,” she said quietly, not meeting his eye. 

He nearly staggered back, the past six weeks running like a movie montage on hyper speed through his mind. Minette—on the City Desk at the  _ Times _ —handing cash under the table to a beat cop on K Street; the Trojan horse on Mulder’s computer, his own scoop running in the  _ Times _ an hour before the  _ Post _ went to press; Minette’s hand sliding down the hip of a White House aide before disappearing with her into the coat check room at The Palm.

“I assure you,” he said, scuffing the leather bottom of his shoe on the cold floor of the morgue, “not a whiff. No one will be able to trace this information back to you.” 

“Thank you,” she smiled shyly, ducking her head, a lock of copper hair pulling loose from her ponytail to whisp along the delicate line of her jaw. He had to resist the urge to finger it softly back behind the shell of her ear. 

Instead he raised the envelope to his temple in a salute, nodded at her and moved toward the door of the autopsy room. He turned back to her when he was within its frame, and she looked up to meet his eye, the glacial blue of her own piercing something deep inside of him. 

“It was nice to officially meet you,” he said, and she smiled again. 

“Oh, nothing about this was official,” she said, and he huffed a laugh and stepped away, the metal door sucking shut behind him. 


	14. March 11, 1888

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A prompt from Aloysia Virgata: “ AU where it’s 1880’s New York and Mulder is a member of a wealthy society family but has no interest in it. Scully is hired as the governess for his younger sister.”

In a city that celebrated extravagance and excess, Fox William Mulder preferred things simple. And Dana Katherine Scully, Irish immigrant and governess to his little sister, was as simple as it got. 

Initially, he resented her mere presence in their house. Samantha was too old for a governess by half and the inflated number of staff in their Madison Square townhouse did nothing but remind him of his family’s elevated rank and fortune, a status given, but not earned, and one he would just as soon forget. But as time wore on, the smallest Scully in a scrappy family of six won him over. First with her intelligence, then with her poise and grace, and finally with her courage.

Were it not for her courage, in fact, neither would have survived... 


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from Aloysia Virgata: “ AU where Roche DID kill Samantha and they find the heart from her nightgown.”

It was a Christmas picture that did it. He’d been attempting to spin a basketball on his finger in the middle of his apartment and it flew off to the starboard and knocked a photo album off his desk and onto the floor, where it opened to Christmas, 1972. In a photo in the lower right-hand corner, Samantha was posing with a brand new bike, dressed in a floral nightgown, the tree behind her covered in garish amounts of tinsel. 

He was just closing the cover to replace it when something pinged at the back of his brain. Scully answered on the second ring. 

“Get over here,” was all he said. 

40 minutes later she was sitting at his coffee table with her laptop open to the Roche file, her eyes dewy and subdued. 

“We’ll need to have the photo analyzed at Quantico, but it looks like the same material,” she said, referring to one of the last two unidentified hearts in Roche’s book. 

Mulder felt like he’d been punched in the solar plexus. 

“He killed her,” he said, deflating.

He’d been expecting a ‘ _ we don’t know that yet’  _ or a ‘ _ without a body, there’s still hope, Mulder _ .’ Instead, she said: “And you killed  _ him _ .” Something in the way she held her shoulders made him think she wasn’t sorry for it. 

He would have crumpled then and there if her nose hadn’t started to bleed. Instead he felt something in him ignite. 

He couldn’t save his sister, but he’s going to save her. 


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from impulsive-astrophile: “ Prompt: Mulder/Scully falls asleep on the other's side of the bed”

The truth was, he’d nearly sat on her.   
  
Gone for a week on a profiling consult, he’d managed to snag a last minute red-eye home and was not expecting to find her in his apartment, definitely not in his bed, and most especially not curled up on his side of it, wrapped around his pillow like a mollusk shell. 

If he hadn’t been so tired — running on fumes and bad coffee caffeine — he would have woken her with a kiss. As it was, he could barely shuck off his rumpled suit and kick off socks stiffened with twice-dried sweat before falling into bed next to her. 

It was a whole other world on this side of the room; pictures off by half a degree, the bathroom five steps further away, but the pillow smelled like the sweet jasmine of her hair and the pull of her, like gravity, was strong no matter where she was in his orbit. By morning she would be tucked into his side, the wrong arm thrown over his waist, his Leinth in a mirror. 


	17. Stakeout

“What time is the next team coming?” Scully asked. 

“Not until 3:00,” Mulder answered. 

“Not even the suspects are out here,” she sighed, leaning her head back against the seat. She’d already kicked off her shoes and had her feet up on the dash like a teenaged girlfriend.

“You and me and the devil makes three,” he rumbled from the seat next to her. 

The car smelled like stale coffee and menthol cigarettes from the agents they’d relieved. There was a pile of damp sunflower seed husks overflowing out of an empty styrofoam cup. She really had to pee. 

From the driver’s seat, Mulder sat complacently, his breath whistling quietly through his generous nose. His arm was resting on the console between them and she thought for a moment about reaching out and taking his hand. 

She was a hard person to know and an impossible person to love, but then along had come Mulder, who had eased into her cracks like epoxy. Sometimes she felt as if he were the only thing holding her together.

“That’s not so bad, I guess,” she said. Four more hours in the dark. 


	18. NSFW

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW drabble request. Managed to stick to 100 words this time.

“Flip over,” Mulder says, his hands sweeping over the globes of her ass. Her ears are still ringing from orgasm, her tongue and lips slow to move, slow to form words.

“Come again?” she says into the downy musk of the pillow. 

Mulder runs a finger gently along the side of her breast, stopping when it encounters the sheet. 

“That’s the general idea,” he rumbles, and she laughs and flops ungracefully onto her back, her knees falling apart to reveal the dewy lotus of her sex, weeping a trickle of Mulder’s tacky seed down her perenium. 

His lips descend, she levitates. 


	19. The Post

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From a Tumblr anonymous prompt: “ Prompt for AU where Mulder is an investigative reporter and Scully is a Pathologist. They bicker and work together to get to the bottom of mysterious deaths and fall in love along the way. Scully is engaged to Ethan, Mulder's competition, but she is not happy or aware that he is cheating on her. Bonus points for angst, fluff, and smut.“

“You can’t tell anyone I gave this to you,” she said, and he had a sudden almost-psychic sexual flash of his cock splitting the soft autumn fur at her center. Of her head thrown back, her sharp little incisors gnashing at the air. 

He shook his head to clear it of the indecorus fantasy. 

“ _ The Post _ protects its sources, Dr. Scully,” he said, and took the envelope from her, his fingers brushing the skin of her hand as he did so. He was certain he saw the soft hairs of her wrist turn to goose flesh.

She turned her head away, offering him her profile, a soft rise of color high on her cheekbone. 

“Ethan Minette is my fiancé, Mr. Mulder,” she said quietly, not meeting his eye. 

He nearly staggered back, the past six weeks running like a movie montage on hyper speed through his mind. Minette—on the City Desk at the  _ Times _ —handing cash under the table to a beat cop on K Street; the Trojan horse on Mulder’s computer, his own scoop running in the  _ Times _ an hour before the  _ Post _ went to press; Minette’s hand sliding down the hip of a White House aide before disappearing with her into the coat check room at The Palm.

“I assure you,” he said, scuffing the leather bottom of his shoe on the cold floor of the morgue, “not a whiff. No one will be able to trace this information back to you.” 

“Thank you,” she smiled shyly, ducking her head, a lock of copper hair pulling loose from her ponytail to whisp along the delicate line of her jaw. He had to resist the urge to finger it softly back behind the shell of her ear. 

Instead he raised the envelope to his temple in a salute, nodded at her and moved toward the door of the autopsy room. He turned back to her when he was within its frame, and she looked up to meet his eye, the glacial blue of her own piercing something deep inside of him. 

“It was nice to officially meet you,” he said, and she smiled again. 

“Oh, nothing about this was official,” she said, and he huffed a laugh and stepped away, the metal door sucking shut behind him. 

2.

He was waiting outside the morgue door when she walked out, paying no attention to her surroundings, her head making a mental list of groceries she needed to pick up on the way home. She was so startled that she had her fist around her pepper spray before she recognized him, holding up a staying hand under the orange soda glow of the street lights, his eyes all apology. 

The morgue door had only clicked shut when she heaved a relieved sigh. 

"Oh," she said, "it's you." The night was cold and dark around them. It was February; the ugliest time of year in DC. 

He smiled at her in the half light and it took her a moment to notice that he was holding out a newspaper toward her in his other hand, the thick stack flopping down as he lifted his arm so that she could read the headline:  ** _EVIDENCE SHOWS MASSIVE COVERUP_ ** , it read, and she snatched it out of his grip.

"You went to print?!" she asked excitedly. It had been weeks since she’d tipped him off. He nodded. 

"Hot off the presses," he said. 

She skimmed the article under his byline, reading as fast as she could. 

"God, I hope this takes them down," she muttered, still reading, "I hate dirty cops." Her pulse was thrumming. 

"It will," he said with confidence, and then shifted a bit on his feet. "Though... it may take your fiancé down with them."

She steeled herself. She'd suspected this was coming since before she'd called Fox Mulder's extension at the Post. So it was true, then. Ethan was in on it. All for a fucking  _ story _ . 

"So be it," she said, and his eyes softened. 

"You okay?" he asked. His breath wafted above their heads in a white vapor and something about the softness of his eyes and the wet glint of his generous lower lip made her forget her nerves. 

"Yeah," she breathed. "Can I... buy you a drink to celebrate?" 

He appeared as surprised as she was by her invitation.

"I know a great place," he said, delighted.

3.

They burst through his door connected at the lips, her hands running over his shoulders to cleave off his suit coat and he stumbled backwards over it as it hit the floor. His blood was singing on a high of lust and gin and the exquisite poetry of her; the Roman cut of her nose, the amber glint of her hair, the way her teeth caught on her s’s.

The slam of the door behind them brought her up short. She pulled back as if surprised to find herself in his apartment, though she'd been the one who'd leaned into his ear at the bar and hissed "take me back to your place," her breath smelling of whiskey and lipstick. She'd been all hands and lips and teeth in the cab.

"You okay?" he asked for the second time that night, out of breath, practically panting, the front of his pants tight. 

"I'm--" she started, "I never do this. I'm sorry, I -- I never do this."

"Hey," he said gently, "we don't have to -- I don't expect -- do you want to sit down?"

She nodded, looking shocky, and he led her over to his couch and then slipped into his kitchen, checking every cup and mug in his sparse cabinets until he found one that looked perfectly clean. He pressed the glass into her hands, the ice clicking gently into the sides. He sat on the floor next to the couch to give her space, crossed his legs and tried not to think of his aching cock. 

"Ethan is --" she began, "we've been together since high school." She was talking to her lap, half the water chugged before he even sat down. Her blouse was still untucked from when he’d pulled it out of her pants to run a hand over her silk-clad breast in the cab and she was fingering the gold engagement ring on her left hand-- it was an antique-looking thing, something he couldn't see her liking, though he admittedly barely knew her at all. 

He nodded at her, wanting to reach a hand out, but opting to rest his arm along the edge of the sofa instead. 

"He's cheating on me," she said, a statement. Mulder knew it to be true, but it seemed too self-serving to say anything confirming it, and so he stayed mum. “But we’ve been together so long, and I didn’t want to believe it. And now that I know he’s in on this…” He reached out and touched her knee lightly, and her eyes sharpened. “Tell me something about yourself,” she went on, her voice dropping an octave, “something that no one else knows.”

And so he told her about his sister. About his years-long search for the truth. They talked and talked as she slowly melted into the sofa, her legs stretched out and almost touching him, her head propped up on her elbow. 

Finally, she blinked slowly down at him. 

“I still feel kind of drunk,” she said, and then yawned. 

“Take my bed,” he said, rising to quickly change the sheets. “The bathroom is just over there,” he nodded toward a door. “There’s a new toothbrush in the medicine cabinet.” He disappeared into the bedroom before she could decline. 

She walked through his bedroom doorway on silent feet just as he was shoving the last pillow into a fresh pillowcase. He hugged it to his chest and made his way to the door, smiling at her shyly as he passed. She grabbed his arm gently and he paused, looked down into her sharp starlet eyes. She smelled of toothpaste and faded perfume. Her face had been scrubbed clean.

“Thank you, Mulder,” she said, and let go, her touch practically burning his skin. 

4.

She called him three weeks later at work, asked him to meet her for lunch. They sat in the cavernous  _ Les Halles _ in the District, at a middle table where Mulder kept getting bumped by people making their way to the restroom. The air was filled with the clatter of silverware on plates, a constant murmur of business talk, the expediter calling orders in the kitchen. She wanted to apologize to him. 

“You have nothing to apologize  _ for _ ,” he said, before the words were even halfway out of her mouth. “If anyone should apologize, it should be me.”

He reached out a hand and brushed his fingers lightly over the back of her left hand. He noticed her ring finger was bare and stopped short.

“I was in a relationship and — even though I knew it was over, I should have never -- I stuck my tongue down your throat before you finished your second drink,” she said, blushing, but with a smile.

“Say what you will about the former,” he said, reaching for his sweating water glass, “but don’t you dare apologize for the latter.”

She leaned back in her chair and signaled for the waiter. As the man walked away with their orders, Scully leaned forward, her elbows on the table, fingers laced over her plate. 

“Detective Cho came to our apartment as Ethan was packing up his things last week,” she said, attempting to keep a cheeky smile from her lips. Mulder’s eyebrows rose to his hairline, though he wasn’t sure which part of her statement surprised him most. “The DA was with her,” she went on, finally cracking a grin. 

“You think Ethan will cop a plea?” Mulder asked excitedly, half his brain already on the phone to Skinner, his editor, the other half already writing the story. 

“Take out your notebook, and I’ll tell you everything,” she said. 

5.

Mulder was on the steps of the courthouse eating a street hot dog when she came clicking down them in her best pumps. She’d been called as a witness in many cases in her life, but never before one in which one of the accused was somebody she had once loved. 

She still felt shaky and overdrawn, but just the sight of his sable hair, his strong profile against the sidewalk, settled her nerves.

They hadn’t seen each other in months, but had taken to talking on the phone in the late evening, initially about the story and the case, eventually dropping any pretense and talking just to hear each other’s voice. It had gotten to the point where if she didn’t hear his low timbre each night before bed, she’d have trouble sleeping. 

He turned when he sensed her and stood when he saw her, his face blossoming into a pleased smile. 

She stopped two steps above him, which made them the same height. His eyes looked mossy in the sun, his lashes long sweeps along his skin. 

“The courtroom smells like a Pulitzer,” she said, “I’m surprised you’re not in there.”

He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat and shrugged. 

“And miss a day like this?” he said, the sun glinting off his hair as off a robin’s wing. 

“You know, I really thought a sharp wit like you would come in with a line like ‘the real prize is out here,’ but I guess I lobbed the softball a little low,” she teased. 

He smiled, shrugged again. 

“What can I say?” he said, “I like the high ones.”

He had a smudge of mustard on the edge of his mouth, and she reached out and wiped it slowly off of him with her thumb, the scrape of his five o’clock shadow rasping. 

She had a sudden almost-psychic sexual flash of his lush mouth opening wetly over the rise of her mons, of his long, warm hands running slowly up the back of her thigh, could practically feel his low, satisfied moan flushing up her skin. 

She blinked away the fantasy but held it in her mind, smiled and reached for his arm, coming down the steps until she was even with him and he turned to walk with her. 

“So it’s done then,” he said, finally pulling his hands from the depths of his coat pockets and reaching out until his hand was resting on the small of her back. “Can I buy you a drink to celebrate?”

She smiled into the sunshine and leaned into his touch. 

  
  



	20. Moody MSR

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anon Tumblr prompt: Can you write some moody MSR? Angsty but uplifting? Maybe some pining? I don't know, HELP

"If it was here, someone would have seen it," Scully says. "If it was here, someone would have said."

He smiles at her, indulgent. His teeth are the same faded ivory of hydrangeas in the fall. 

"Maybe they wouldn't," he says. 

She sighs into the air and looks at the tops of the trees on the hillside nearby -- there is not a breath of wind.

“There’s a bristlecone pine tree in California so old that it’s called ‘Methuselah,’” he says, “it’s in a grove within the Inyo National Forest, and its exact location within the grove is a secret protected by the United States Forest Service.” He gives her a hanging look. “Everyone has secrets, Scully. Even the tree police.”

“I don’t believe the US Forest Service is technically a policing agency, Mulder,” she snaps back. 

“Tell that to Methuselah.”

The forest around them looks dark and boreal, rain staining the bark of the trees the color of pitch. The terrain here undulates in fan-like slopes of drumlins, the earth carved with the ungentle fingers of a long-melted glacier. 

She considers his profile as Mulder climbs to the rise on which a plane of tamarack grow, their needles a bright yellow against the slate grey sky. His breath leaks from his mouth like the mists of Avalon, the vapor sinking to the ground as heavy as a thought. 

If he knew her secrets, what would he think? Hers were all secrets of him. The things she'd do when she thought of him -- the truths she couldn't admit. 

She digs her heels into the mulchy earth, clambering up the hillside to join him. He grabs her hand when she slips on a slick bit of duff and pulls her to his side, the skin of his hand warm and dry beneath her fingers. 

They stand looking out at the undulating hills, the monotony of grayish-green broken up by the occasional brown field or the roof of a barn. At their feet is a granite boulder topped with a ridge that points backward, like the bone at the crest of a dog's skull. There is lichen growing on it that is the same color as his eyes.

"I don't think it's out here," he finally sighs. She'd said the same thing in DC, but keeps the thought to herself, lest she invoke the spirit of I Told You So one time too many. She could grouse as often as she liked, but the reality was she'd follow him anywhere and they both knew it. 

He took her hand to help her down the slippery hillside, his body a hulking, solid presence beside her. When they reached the path back to where they'd left their waiting rental, he did not let go. 

Some secrets, she thought, were worth keeping -- too essential and primal to forget


End file.
